Viktor Svedberg, Jesse Blacker and the Kazakhstan hockey team | Photo: IIHF
Naturalized Canadians – Darren Dietz, Jesse Blacker and Curtis Valks, as well as Swede Victor Svedberg – will not play in the Kazakhstan hockey team in the upcoming world championship, the media “Shaiba.kz” reports.
As usual, all these legionnaires also played in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) last season, representing Russian clubs. It is reported that all these players will be stripped of their Kazakh citizenship, and as a result, they will also be counted as legionnaires in the KHL from now on.
Recently, the national team of Kazakhstan also changed the head coach. Andrej Skabelka has been replaced in this position by local specialist Galim Mambetalijevs. Official reasons are not mentioned, but the information at the disposal of the Kazakh portal shows that it is related to Skabelka’s Belarusian citizenship, which would make his entry into Latvia impossible.
Kazakhstan is one of the opponents of the Latvian national team at the upcoming world championship in Riga. The match between the two teams is scheduled for May 20. It will be the sixth game in the tournament for both Kazakhstan and Latvia. In addition to these teams, the national teams of Canada, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Norway, Slovenia and Switzerland will also be in the group.
One of Latvia’s opponents changes its head coach a month before the WC
